Waiting for...

...the charges to be changed to.

"They've done something clever with computers and the global-internets-zone-web, we don't understand it, but we know we don't like it."

Surely they can't keep on doing that?

The PB's legal team should be looking to have the whole thing thrown out if the persecution, sorry, prosecution can't even decide on what they're being accused of.

FFS, any Judge, in any country, should be able to see this for the utter national embarrassment it's becoming and be throwing it out anyway.

They just look like a bunch of twats now.

Quickly ...

.. .move the goalposts before we score an own goal!

The farce that is the Pirate Bay prosecution lurches again.

When will the media industry get down off the wall and realise that if you can't beat them, then you may as well join them?

Google

Type in "Coldplay torrent" and you get 800,000 hits to torrents.. 800 times more than the Pirate Bay!

Definitely time to go after Google, you pussies..

Monkey business

It's like a bloody funny legal system that lets prosecutors constantly amend the indictment during the trial in order to make securing a conviction easier.

Charges get dropped all the time - but actually adding stuff to the charge sheet mid-trial...?!

Some people concerned with due process (and other such matters that long since bit the dust in the UK) might feel that if the prosecution can't get its act together in the months during which it was preparing its case (and particularly given all the resources at its disposal), their lawyers should be laughed out of court for ineptitude.

Google versus TPB

You can just as easily find illegal material using Google. Just do a search on something slightly more specific (say, for example, "coldplay torrent"), and at least 10 pages of torrent links will come up.

If I were in the habit of downloading such stuff (not that I would, of course, but AC just in case), I'd find it far easier to find torrents this way than to search using TPB or any other torrent site.

Paris, because she must be more knowledgeable about torrent technology than John Kennedy.

If....

If TPB do lose I will be very happy to send them a donation. Sure, it may not entirely compensate them for any in-shower-soap-retrieval distress they may suffer, but might help a little.

If the big fat greedy we-don't-quite-understand-torrents-but-we're-going-to-sue-you-anyway conglomerates win I shall feel rather less inclined to part with my hard-owned.

Paris...because she'd be welcome to continually change her demands with me.

Twitter 'brokep'

Reading some of Peter Sunde's 'brokep' twitter enteries they seem to be having great fun while the trial runs.

Is it that much of a stretch...

to type "Coldplay torrent" into Google?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=coldplay+torrent&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

There, you get 785K results - pretty much entirely torrents of Coldplay albums I'm sure.

Google should be next in the dock...

What's that noi..........<no carrier>

The thing is...

It's been said before on comments, it's been said in the article.. if they want to crush piracy.. they'll have to crush the technology behind google.. and that isn't going to happen...

As well as others.. I pay for my stuff, but I really hope to see the Pirate bay come out of this, the music industry has been whining about this for too long.

IFPI are big fat doo doo heads.

Nothing constructive to say really. In a simialr vein to the doo doo head on the stand.

Maybe they should employ the defendants to teach them how this new fangled stuff works. Then employ some other people who aren't decrepid to figure out a way of using this for their own advantages. But that not the Doo Doo Head way.

Paris 'cos she feels the pain of a Doo Doo Head.

Two things

1) I was always under the impression that the prosecuting lawyers had to do their work _before_ the case and come to court with everything prepared. I understand that things change and new 'evidence' comes to light, but this should all have been sorted out beforehand. This changing of the charges stinks of a fishing expedition.

2) I just googled "coldplay bittorrent" and got about 345,000 hits. So if TPB would have retured 1,000 and Google 345,000 then perhaps Google is about 300 times as guilty of whatever TPB is guilty of.

Paris because... WTF it's Wednesday.

Piracy will get everyone cheap movie and music downloads

Limewire and the Pirate Bay have forced ITunes to give everyone DRM free music downloads at a good bitrate with a price that is becoming sensible, it will also do this for movies. When the assholes that run that industry work out that if you can get a new movie rental every night from Lovefilm on DVD for £1 , it should be possible to do the same with a download that doesn't involve physical media or postage costs.

If we had listened to the music industry, compact cassette, the recordable CD and MP3 players would never have happened. The music industry would prefer to sell warped vinyl that autoscratches after the first play just like they always did make you buy the same thing over and over again and, in the UK, make you buy it for twice the price anyone else is paying.

It is the Pirate Bay that are the solution here. If the industry started pricing sensibly they could be making £1 per movie off of anyone who would ever be likely to pay every time they wanted to watch a movie and maybe 50p for a new single or maybe £3-£4 for a freshly released album.

Why are they too stupid to see it?

Paris, because she's had one of her movies downloaded free by a lot of Pirate Bay users.

Eh?

Maybe the sentence

“All components are necessary for users of the service are able to share files with one another.”

was removed because it's not an English sentence?

Perhaps "All your files are belong to us" would be closer to the actual charge?

Coldplay Torrent = 800k?

800,000 results for Coldpaly torrent on google, the trial must be working, they must be cracking down, i only got 733,000 results returned... they must be making a dent... hahaha! can you say, fail!

And not just Google...

Live returns over 200k results, Yahoo returns 2.3m, Lycos 41k, Ask 196k...

I could go on. The only way they could prevent people searching for illegal content would be to outlaw any searchable database of web pages, since the alternative (making search providers legally liable for the results they return) would be unworkable. What part of "Don't shoot the messenger" don't they understand?

Besides which, since most record companies have generously provided free videos of music on YouTube, all you need is a copy of Audacity to do a high tech version of recording the song when it's played on the radio...

And the record companies didn't get very far in trying to ban radio cassette recorders, or even dual deck cassette recorders, or the "High speed dubbing" feature. So I can't imagine them getting very far if they took sound card manufacturers to court for providing "What I hear" functionality or line in jacks (the manual equivalent - sling a cable between Line Out and Line In).

Where there's a will to obtain music free-of-charge, there's inevitably a way.

Since when were Torrents illegal?

“provide the ability to others to upload and store torrent files to the service”

Er... Surely the actual torrents themselves are not illegal? There's no copyrighted materials there!

So it's now illegal to upload and store links? Uh-oh...

I'd be interested in seeing how they're going to paint this as illegal...

google, Live and yahoo

All of those have a better search at torrents then PBT do and yet none of them are in the case....maybe it should be "let's pick on the little guy"

Paris because when I googled her torrent I got Results 1 - 100 of about 1,890,000

Only Vague Understanding of BitTorrent?

If they're spending all those millions on lawyers, you'd think they would get a clue on BitTorrent technology. Maybe even try it out a few times, use it to download RedHat Linux or something.

@Gary Littlemore

Thanks for the twit-er info. I normally steer clear of that place, but this is fun reading.

"We had some pizza after todays episode of #spectrial. Met the whole oposing [sic] side and asked if they could pick up the check. They refused :("

After reading more on this charade, I hope they counter sue. There has to be plenty of cause to do so.

More newts please

Actually the reason why the media companies are going after TPB rather than google, is because google can afford better lawyers and judges than the media companies can.

Still I can see tommorrow's court record

<Judge> How do you plead?

<TPB> Not gulity...... to whatever is on today's charge sheet

How about trail by axe? the accused witch has his head placed on a block and an axe aimed at his neck

If he is guilty of being a witch, the axe will bounce off and then we burn him

Bad phrasing

changed to “provide the ability to others to upload and store torrent files to the service”

And surely that's not illegal. Because torrent files contain no actual copyrighted material. And trying to ban torrent files is like trying to ban flour or talcum powder because some drug dealers use it to cut up their cocaine -- ain't gonna happen, no way.

On another note, why haven't they tried going after, say, Rapidshare, someone who actually hosts illegal files?

You will not win

I remember reading an article that interviewed a software developer and a hacker regarding the MPAA's concern over DVDs and piracy. Their concern was that DVDs being un-encrypted would allow the movies to be more easily pirated and were demanding encryption. The osftware developer advised the MPAA to "just get over it" because their software had been sent back and forth across the Internet regardless of what they do to try to stop it. The hacker said something to the effect of "There are 16 million of us and one of you. Who do you think is gonna win?"

AC for obvious reasons...

Double farce

It's not just what people say, but the way they're said to say it. John K isn't a bad guy, he's just a lawyer who's found himself a nice little honeypot. But since he doesn't speak Swedish, he needs an interpreter, and he has to be interpreted back into Swedish. Seems like they've found an interpreter who's lousy at the job. I could do better (and have...). So on top of getting ticked off by the defence and the judge for vague answers, JK has had to answer imaginary questions he got from the interpreter, and his answers have left everybody flummoxed.

As for Swedish justice, it's a bit reactionary but not usually as vicious as British injustice. And there's a panel of lay assessors to ask real questions and deflate some of the legal bombast. And they don't like being arsed around with. All this chopping and changing by the Pigopolists has made a very bad impression. The court doesn't like being made a laughing stock. The Law may be a Hass, but it doesn't like to see itself in the mirror.

Soon they'll have dropped all the charges about doing things and end up prosecuting the lads for things they've said that the Ps don't like. Which is basically what the PB crew have been saying all along.

(Paris cos she's a nice little honeypot and can by anywhere without an interpreter...)

An easier way to deal with this

Ban Coldplay. That way nobody will ever try and 'share' their music with the world, ever again.

I use the word share in the same way you might think of sharing the flu with someone. Or syphilis.

I like the Pirate Bay :-)

I use exclusively FOSS s/w so I'm not interested in the warez and I've got a Netflix subscription so I don't care about the movies & series however... I missed episode ten of 24 the other day as I couldn't find anywhere near me that sold vhs tapes. This simply won't do, especially as I pay $40 a month for basic cable here and that's the only show I watch with any regularity.

Well blow me down if our Swedish friends weren't tracking a torrent of it a mere 24 minutes after it aired! That's fair use and very good service in my book.

Thanks guys, good luck with the court case! :-)

Also, it's nice to know theres a publicly accessible tracker out there if you ever need to upload something big to lots of people.

Tools

"All components are necessary for users of the service are able to share files with one another"

Er, apart from Bit Torrent software.

@Steve Evans

at least they didn't turn you into a neut. doubt you would recover.

I can't help but feel the IFPI are missing the point

Even if the TPB chaps get convicted and even if they get sent down and even if all the TPB servers are shut-down the key point is that it won't make a blind bit of difference to the availability of illegal downloads. Shutting down TPB won't remove the actual files. They will still be available.

So, why bother?

@mittfh

"... I can't imagine them getting very far if they took sound card manufacturers to court for providing "What I hear" functionality or line in jacks (the manual equivalent - sling a cable between Line Out and Line In)."

That's precisely what the new digital media interfaces (hdmi type things) are for. You can't license the tech unless you agree to implement DRM which switches off the line-out socket when the a flag is set in the content.

Just like DVD regions, it will all work until someone twigs that their hardware will become really popular if an unofficial but easy modification is made. I see an unexplained jumper or sloppily written driver being rather popular.

As to the article - yes, dropping charges is one thing, but widening the scope part-way through should cause it to be thrown out. However, perhaps the PB team want it to continue to get a decisive win. Perhaps the IFPI team thought a PR victory could be gained by prosecuting for infringement and ending up with a win, even if it was just for something minor.

Let's hope the Swedes show a bit of backbone and stick to their consumer-friendly ways. It isn't just about TBP, its about corporate control over the law.